Читать книгу Out of the Primitive - Robert Ames Bennet - Страница 6

Spurred to their utmost, the oarsmen drove the boat shorewards so swiftly that it was less than thirty yards out when the castaways came flying out the rocky slope of the cliff foot and scrambled down to the water's edge.

Lord James sprang up and waved his yachting cap.

"Miss Leslie!—Tom, old man!" he joyously hailed them. "You're safe!—both safe!"

"Good Lord! That you, Jimmy?" shouted back the man, "Well, of all the—Hey! down brakes! 'Ware rocks!"

At the warning, the boat's crew backed water and came on inshore with more caution. Without stopping to ask her permission, the man caught up the panting, excited girl in his arms, and waded out to meet the boat.

"That's near enough. Swing round," he ordered.

The boat came about and backed in a length, to where he stood thigh-deep in the still water, with the blushing girl upraised on his broad shoulder. Lord James again lifted his cap. His bow could not have been more formal and respectful had the meeting occurred in the queen's drawing-room.

"Miss Leslie! This is a very great pleasure, 'pon my word! But you've overheated yourself. You should not have run," he remonstrated. As Blake lifted her in over the stern, he deftly unfolded the silk dustcoat and held it open for her. "Permit me—No need of such haste, y'know. I assure you, we're not so strict as to our hour of sailing."

"I—I—Of course we—" stammered the girl.

"To be sure! Ah, no hat! I should have foreseen. Very stupid of me not to've brought a hat or parasol. But I dare say you'll make out till we get back aboard ship."

His conventional manner and quiet conversational tone alike tended to ease her of her embarrassment. By the time she had slipped on the coat and seated herself, the crimson blushes that had flooded her tanned cheeks were fast subsiding, and she was able to respond with a fair degree of composure: "That was extremely thoughtful of you, Lord Avondale!"

"Not at all, not at all," he disclaimed. "Cocks'n, if you'll be so kind as to go forward, I'll take the tiller. Tom, old man! don't stand there all day. You'll get your feet damp. Climb in!"

"No; pull out," replied Blake, his eyes hardening with sudden resolve.

"I forgot something. Got to go back to the cleft. You take Jen—Miss

Leslie aboard at once."

"Oh, no, Tom!" hastily protested the girl. "We'll wait here for you."

"Here?" he demanded. "And without your hat?"

Miss Leslie put her scarred and begrimed little hands to her dishevelled hair.

Blake went on in an authoritative tone: "It won't do for you to get a sunstroke now—after all these weeks. Jimmy, take her straight aboard. I've got to go back, I tell you. We didn't stop for anything. There's a jarful of mud and so forth that we sure can't leave to the hyenas." He met the girl's appealing glance with firm decision. "You must get aboard, out of this sun, fast as they can take you."

"Yes, of course, if you think it best—Tom," she acquiesced.

Her ready docility would of itself have been sufficient to surprise Lord James. But, in addition, there was a soft note in her voice and a glow in her beautiful hazel eyes that caused him to glance quickly from her to his friend. Blake was already turning about to wade ashore. From what little could be seen of his bristly face, its expression was stern, almost morose. The powerful jaw was clenched.

Though puzzled and a trifle discomposed, Lord James quietly seated himself beside the girl, and signing the men to give way, took the tiller.

"My dear Miss Leslie," he murmured, "if you but knew my delight over having found both you and Tom safe and well!"

"Then you really know him?" she replied. "Yes, to be sure; he called you by your first name. Wait! I remember now. One day soon after we were cast ashore—the second day, when we were thinking how to get fire, to drive away the leopard—"

"Leopard? I say! So that's where you got this odd gown?"

"No—the mother leopard and the cubs. I was going to say, Tom remarked that James Scarbridge had been his chum."

"Had been? He meant is!"

"Then it's true! Oh, isn't it strange and—and splendid? You know, I did not connect the remark with you, Lord James. He had told me to try to think how we were to find food for the next meal. His reference to you was made quite casually in his talk with Winthrope."

"Winthrope!" exclaimed Lord James. "Then he, too, reached shore? Yet if so—"

The girl put her hand before her eyes, as if to shut out some terrible sight. Her voice sank to a whisper: "He—he was killed in the second cyclone—a few days ago."

"Ah!" muttered the young earl. After a pause, he asked in a tone of profound sympathy, "And the others—Lady Bayrose?"

"Don't ask! don't ask!" she cried, shuddering and trembling.

But quickly she regained her composure and looked up at him with a calm unwavering gaze that told him how much she had undergone and the strength of character she had gained during the fearful weeks that she had been marooned on this savage and desolate coast.

"How foolish of me to give way!" she reproached herself. "It is what you might have expected of me before—before I had been through all this, with his example to uplift me out of my helplessness and inefficiency. Believe me, Lord Avondale, I am a very different young woman from the shallow, frivolous girl you knew during those days on the Mediterranean."

"Shallow! frivolous!" he protested. "Anything but that, Miss Genevieve!

You must have known how vastly different were my—er—impressions. If

Lady Bayrose hadn't so suddenly shunted you off at Aden to the Cape

boat—Took me quite by surprise, I assure you. Had you kept on to

India, I had hoped to—er—"

She gave him a glance that checked his fast-mounting ardor.

"I—I beg pardon!" he apologized. "This of course is hardly the time—About the others, if I may ask—that is, if it's not too painful for you. I infer that Lady Bayrose—that she did not—reach the shore."

The girl's thorn-scarred, sun-blistered hands clasped together almost convulsively. But she met his look of concern with unflinching braveness.

"Poor dear Lady Bayrose!" she murmured. "They had put her and the maids into one of the boats—there at the first, when the ship crashed on the reef. They ran back to fetch me, but before they could rush me across, a wave more terrible than all the others swept the ship. It tore loose the boat and whirled them away, over and over!"

"Gad!" he exclaimed.

"It also carried away the captain and most of the crew. Between the breakers, Winthrope and Tom and I were flung into the one remaining boat. Winthrope cut the rope before the sailors could follow, and then—then the steamer slipped back off the reef and went down."

"I say! Only the three of you left! The boat brought you safe ashore?"

"No, we were overturned in the breakers, but were washed up—flung up—how, I cannot tell. The wind was frightful. It must have blown us out of the surf and along with the water that was being driven up and over into the lagoon. The first I knew, I was behind a little knoll with Winthrope. Tom was near—in a pool. He—he crawled out. It was nearly dark. We were all so beaten and exhausted that we slept until morning. When we awoke, there was no sign of—of any one else, or of the boat—nothing; only the top of the highest mast sticking up above the water, out beside the reef. Tom swam out to it; but he couldn't get anything—even he couldn't."

"Swam out, you say? These waters swarm with sharks. They're keen to nip a swimmer!"

The girl's eyes flashed. "Do you believe he'd fear them?—that he'd fear anything?"

"Not he! I fancy I ought to know, if any one. Knocked about with him, half 'round the world. I dare say he's told you."

"Would it be like him to claim the credit of your friendship? No! Before, on the steamer, we had mistaken him to be—to be what he appears to strangers—rough, almost uncouth. Yet even that frightful morning—it was among the swamps, ten miles or more up the coast. He carried us safe out of them, me nearly all the way—out of the bog and water, safe to the palms; and he as much tortured with thirst as were we!"

"Fancy! No joke about that—thirst!"

"Yet it was only the beginning of what he did for us. Starvation and wild beasts and snakes and the fever—he saved us from all. Yet he had nothing to begin with—no tools or weapons, only his burning glass. Can you wonder that I—that I—"

She stopped and looked down, the color mounting swiftly under the dark coat of tan that covered the exquisite complexion he remembered so pleasantly.

"My word!" he remonstrated, amazed and disquieted. "Surely not that!

It's—it's impossible! It can't be possible!"

"Do you think so?" she whispered. "If you but knew the half—the tenth—of what he has done!"

The rusty side of the tramp loomed up above them. The boat crew flung up their oars, and Lord James steered in alongside, under the sling that was being lowered for the rescued lady. She pointed up at it, and met the reproachful, half-dazed glance of her companion with a look of compassionate regret for his disappointment. Yet she made no effort to conceal the love for his friend and rival that shone with tender radiance from her candid eyes.

"You should know him—his true, his real self!" she said. "Hasten back.

Do not delay to come aboard with me. Hasten ashore and to the cleft.

See for yourself."

She caught the descending sling with a dexterity that astonished him, and seated herself in it before he could rise to assist her.

"Haul away," she called in a clear voice that held no note of timidity. Those above at the tackle hastened to obey. As she was swung upwards, she looked down at the earl and waved him to put off.

"Hasten!" she urged. "Do not wait. I am all right now. Even if he is returning, go to the cleft and see."

He shook his head, and waited until she had been hauled up the ship's side. But as her little moccasined feet cleared the bulwarks and Meggs himself leaned out to draw her inboard, he signed the oarsmen to thrust off again.

Knowing the course, they made direct for the end of the sunken ledge. Blake had not returned, nor was he anywhere in sight. They skirted in along the rocky slope of the cliff foot to where it curved away into the sand beach of the plain. Lord James sprang ashore alone and hastened inland along the base of the cliffs.

A brisk walk of ten minutes over the sandy plain brought him to the grove at the foot of the cleft. In the midst of the trees was a pool, half choked with the dried mud and rubbish of a recent flood from the ravine. The wash had obliterated all tracks below; but there were traces of a trail leading up the ravine over a four-foot ledge. He took the rock at a bound, and hastened on upwards between the lofty walled sides of the cleft.

At the first turn he was brought to an abrupt halt. From side to side, between two outjutting corners of rock, the ravine had been barricaded with a twelve-foot boma of thorn scrub. It was a fence high enough and strong enough to stop even a hungry lion. In the centre was a low opening, partly masked by the dry spiky fronds of a small date palm.

"Gad!" murmured the Englishman. "Some of Tom's engineering! And she said he started without weapons or tools—on this coast! . . . Yet for him to have won her—No, no, it's impossible! impossible! American or not, she's a lady—thoroughbred! He's a true stone, but in the rough—uncut, unpolished! A girl of her breeding—He's worth it, 'pon my word, he is; though I never would have fancied that she, of all girls—She's so different. No! it's impossible! it can't be! Must be pure fancy on her part—gratitude. It can't be anything more!"

A heavy step sounded on the far side of the barrier, and a deep voice called out to him: "Hello, there! That you, Jimmy? Thought it about time you were due. What you doing?—telling yourself how to climb over? Abase yeh noble knee to the dust and crawl through, me lud."

Without pausing to reply, Lord James stooped and crept through the narrow passage under the thorny wall. As he straightened up on the inner side, Blake caught and gripped his hand in a big calloused palm.

"Jimmy!" he exclaimed, his pale blue eyes glistening with the soft light of deep friendship. "Jimmy boy! to think you beat 'em to it! I figured ten to one odds that it was a tramp chartered by Papa Leslie—And then to see you pop up in the sternsheets, spic and span as a laundry ad! When you sang out—Lord!"

"Ring off, bo! Those're my fingers you're mashing!" objected the victim.

As Blake released him, he stepped aside and ran his eye up and down the sinewy rag-and-skin-clad form of the engineer. He nodded approvingly.

"Lean, hard as nails, no sign of fever—and after six weeks on this beastly coast! How'd you do it, old man? You're fit—deuced fit!"

"Fit to give pointers to the Wild Man from Borneo," chuckled Blake. He drew out a silver cigarette case and snapped open the lid. "See those little beauties?—No! hands off! Good Lord! those're my arrow tips, soaking in snake poison! A scratch would do for you as sure as a drink of cyanide. Brought down an eland with one of those little points—antelope big as a steer."

"Poison! fancy now!" exclaimed Lord James.

"Yes; from a puff adder that almost got Miss Jenny—fellow big as my leg. Struck at her as she bent to pick an amaryllis. If it had so much as grazed her hand or arm—God!"

He looked away, his teeth clenched together and the sweat starting out on his broad forehead. What he thought of Genevieve Leslie was plainly evident in his convulsed face and dilated eyes. If he could be so overwrought by the mere remembrance of a danger that she had escaped, he must love her, not as most men love, but with all the depth and strength of his powerful nature. Lord James's lips pressed together and his gray eyes clouded with pain.

"Close shave, heh?" he muttered.

"Yes," replied Blake. He drew in a deep breath, and added, "Not the first, though, nor the last. But a miss is as good as a mile, hey, Jimmy boy?"

"Gad, old man, that sounds natural! Can't say you look it, though—not altogether. Must get you aboard and into another style of fine raiment. Fur trousers not good form in this climate, y'know. You picked up that shirt at a remnant counter, I take it. Come aboard. Must mow that alfalfa patch before any one suspects you're trying to raise a beard."

The friendly banter seemed to have the contrary effect from that intended. Blake's face darkened.

"Good Lord, no!" he rumbled. "Go aboard with her? What d'you take me for?"

"Give you my word, I don't take you at all," replied the puzzled

Englishman.

"What! Hasn't she told you? But of course she wouldn't—unless she saw you alone," muttered Blake. "Come on up the canon. I've thought it all out—just what must be done. But it'll take some time to explain. Wait! Did you come alone?—any one follow you?"

"No. Told 'em to stay near the boat."

"Just the same, I'll make sure," said Blake. He dived into the barricade passage, and quickly reappeared, dragging at the butt of the date palm. "There, me lud; the door is shut. Nobody is going to walk in on our private conference now. Come on."